real blues VS Fake blues?......

[Jusatele]

Saw Buddy Last year with BB
Buddy really put on the show.
BB, well he is getting old, Used to be he was all over the place, then he started to have to sit down, Last time we went to see him he was playing all his parts, now he takes his solos
Yes BB still is the best entertainer out there, within 30 seconds of getting on stage he has the audience in his hand and he keeps them there all night, his stories, his songs and the way he puts on the show, it will be a loss to REAL BLUES when he is gone.
But I still have problems with the " hold my pinky such as I sip my tea and show off how much I know more than you do as we discuss the blues REAL BLUES" I think those guys need to go out and get a lesson in real blues. Blues has evolved since the day it was two guys doing a call and return while hoeing a feild by hand, and will keep on keeping on

[kiwiblues]

Da blues is what it is that's all. It's an evolving genra. Enjoy it all if it sounds and feels good to you to listen to and play.
We had an earthquake here a few weeks ago. The city I grew up in is gone.
My house and life's investment is about to fall into the ocean and be demolished. There's shit coming up through the great cracks in my once pretty garden.
I'm feeling real blue.
Somedays I like to hear Son House, others I like to hear Cream.
I find myself playin' a lot of Ry Cooder.
I never stop to bother which one is more genuine.
I love arguments and can be pretty opinionated at times so it's funny how I couldn't give a shit about what is the real blues and what is not.
Maybe folks who worry about that sort of thing just haven't got enough "real blues" in their own lives.

[DonnyK]

Da blues is what it is that's all. It's an evolving genra. Enjoy it all if it sounds and feels good to you to listen to and play.
We had an earthquake here a few weeks ago. The city I grew up in is gone.
My house and life's investment is about to fall into the ocean and be demolished. There's shit coming up through the great cracks in my once pretty garden.
I'm feeling real blue.
Somedays I like to hear Son House, others I like to hear Cream.
I find myself playin' a lot of Ry Cooder.
I never stop to bother which one is more genuine.
I love arguments and can be pretty opinionated at times so it's funny how I couldn't give a shit about what is the real blues and what is not.
Maybe folks who worry about that sort of thing just haven't got enough "real blues" in their own lives.

Harsh times there, sorry to hear that.

I think like many others here the OP is too narrow minded with his opinion. You'd have been better not declaring one form fake and another real, if anything, at least in my view, when you declared anything other than Fred McDowell et al and further, anything outside of the delta to not be 'real' blues, you undermined anything you've said on the subject. It's an elitist view and reminds me of people who say things like "Oh, I liked such and such a band before they were famous" as if in someway to prove yourself more of a real fan, as if in someway you are superior to others.

I'm only a meager 30 years old (tomorrow) and one thing I've learned is to be as open minded as possible. Dismissing stuff and granting yourself a superiority based on that doesn't make you a better person, it makes you a poorer one.

[maxx england]

I just pick up my guitar and play stuff. I think it's blues, other people think it's blues, that'll do for me.

[1four5]

What about this 10 year old kid. He aint old enough to know real blues. But he can play and sing them

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkpv7rzA ... re=related

[s1120]

What about this 10 year old kid. He aint old enough to know real blues. But he can play and sing them

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkpv7rzA ... re=related

I have a Albert king record(as we most all probably do ). And has a line it in when he's explaining the blues. " that little baby crying in the crib.... She's got the blues...". There is no right or wrong or real or fake... If you have felt it... It's real

[farmaz]

Do I get an award for the longest drawn out post in internet history

It is real simple imo, blues began from Negro slaves and "hollers" people like charley patton, henry sloan etc started what I call real blues. It worked it's way around & got watered down as it got more popular.

The music went from having real meaning and feeling like with the music of sonhouse (dare I add blind willie johnson here lol) to pure shit that people call blues.

Thats my opinion and I am sticking to it.


And to the idiots that said I dont know what real down blues is LMFAO, You know nothing of my life, try kicking heroin, being homeless, having guns & knife's pulled on you etc etc etc............

[jeffl]

I can't speak for anybody else's experience, but I think there's a difference between blues that's played for club entertainment or recordings, and blues that's played sittin' around alone, or with a buddy or two.
I would agree somewhat with the sentiment of farmaz, that alot of what is played as blues has lost some of the elements that made it a special genre: i.e., the laments and field hollers of the early days, a means of expression for the sharecroppers & even the slaves earlier. But, I think the blues artists of the 50's, who moved up north to get where the industrial explosion was,are largely responsible for changing the nature of the music themselves.

They changed dance blues from the low down juke joint music to citified amplified stuff, and sacrificed alot of the genre in the process. They got around white people from the cities & suburbs, and then laid it on the Europeans, and look what happened......

[1four5]

Music evolves. As long as there are people there will be different genre definitions. Try being a banjo player in a bluegrass world, and dare to play blues on it

[farmaz]

I can't speak for anybody else's experience, but I think there's a difference between blues that's played for club entertainment or recordings, and blues that's played sittin' around alone, or with a buddy or two.
I would agree somewhat with the sentiment of farmaz, that alot of what is played as blues has lost some of the elements that made it a special genre: i.e., the laments and field hollers of the early days, a means of expression for the sharecroppers & even the slaves earlier. But, I think the blues artists of the 50's, who moved up north to get where the industrial explosion was,are largely responsible for changing the nature of the music themselves.

They changed dance blues from the low down juke joint music to citified amplified stuff, and sacrificed alot of the genre in the process. They got around white people from the cities & suburbs, and then laid it on the Europeans, and look what happened......

100% agree.

[Disciple]

Might be easier to say what the Blues isn't rather than what it is.

It's not played on a certain instrument nor by a specific kind of person. It's not phony or pretentious or contrived. The blues don't automatically appear because your honey left you or life got rough. They certainly aren't found in the depths of drug addiction or alcoholism. Down on your luck, homeless, unemployed not a free pass into getting or being the blues. The blues might be a result of elitism gone bad but they don't practice any sort of elitism. I've chatted with Buddy Guy in his club and John Primer at a show near my home. I've traded jokes with Samuel James at a concert and been in the room with many other big players and never once got the feeling they saw themselves as being "elite" or above their audience.

Some certain things about the blues; they did start at a specific time as yet undetermined by the most studious musicologists. They do seem to emanate from experience but no one has concluded just what those experiences are or how one acquires them. Great players like John Lee Hooker struggled to describe the blues when asked. John Lee appears to never have put a better verbal definition on the blues than anyone in this thread when asked however he may have been the best that ever lived in interpreting the blues through his music and lyrics.

Nobody could possibly make an argument that Muddy Waters was not authentic and genuinely a bluesman. In the space of his life he managed to play something like every type of accepted blues that I'm aware of (not that |I know every blues tune ever played). Think about it, the field recordings thru albums like the Real Folk Blues and Hard Again the weird and wild Electric Mud. Can anyone listen to Levon Helm's Electric Dirt and not feel the blues and sense the connection to Muddy's "Electric Mud" album. Levon himself talks about the link and inspiration there. It's a tremendous modern example of the continuity of the evolution of the music called blues.

I'll take Johnny Winters word for it, Muddy was the real deal and so long as I can feel, hear and see the connections between that "modern Chicago sound and Bukka White, Son House or Fred MacDowell I'm not accepting that the blues have ended or faded.

WATERMELON SLIM, REVEREND PEYTON, SAMUEL JAMES, RY COODER, DR JOHN, TAJ MAHAL, MAVIS STAPLES to name a few; if these aren't modern examples of how the blues is entirely alive and well then there really never was a blues genre, it's all just music with no association.

I imagine Robert Palmer could make a pretty convincing and sound argument for the blues spanning much more than a decade, I guess actually he has in a book called Deep Blues, I don't recall anywhere where he defines an end or even a beginning. He just does his best to describe the entirety of the blues. I think he's done a pretty good job.

[jellyroll baker]

People who want their "real blues" all gritty 'n' raw 'n' untamed seem to forget that the early blues was actually a pretty sophisticated, urbane kind o' music.

[The Saint]

I wrote a long reply to this one last night. Lots of 4 letter words and how much some of the replys made me sick. Went into my history some just to let you know I know where it's coming from! When I went to preview my reply, I found out that the connection had timed out and I was no longer logged in. I considered revising it in a document and copy and paste into a reply, but decided against it. I had said what I had to say, and nobody had to read that crap anyway. Nobody to get offended. Damn I feel good!

[louistheblues]

Well, please listen to Sam Chatmon on you tube (1878-1983) white folk, rediscovered by Alan Lomax, used to play the blues before Son House and Robert Johnson were even born. He was a very humble man that never said anything about the blues other than in his songs, that's the blues!

[Erike]

Wow, I m super late for this one, but I can not help but post something... This thread made me laugh a lot by the way. Love the sense of humor some of the members put to it, the pet back and forth answers, living poor, and all that bout classic music, hillarious!!!!Well, this is my modest opinion:

If I like it I'll listen to it, fake or real. Everybody has a way of doing their thing, I dont like a lot of the new stuff either, but ya know, other people do, and that is the bottom line. Instead of thinking fake or real, just have a good time listening to stuff and most of all, playing stuff.
Happy playing everyone!